32-Year-Old Actor Interviewing Himself at Age 12

32-Year-Old Actor Interviewing Himself at Age 12 (the adult version, though not the kid, very much reminds me of one of my nephews)

There's no reasoning ...

There's no reasoning with a leftist, because all serious leftists will lie about *anything*, including plain facts of life that anyone with two or three working brain cells to rub together can grasp by just opening his eyes.

As witness:

Victor Reppert: "My concern is that with as much money in politics as there is, you might not get all the liberalism liberals want, with government money and involvement used to help people who lack it, but you won't get conservatism either, which is the government keeping its hands off. People who buy influence in Congress want government to help them, which involves getting the government to help those with established wealth. Are oil subsidies liberal or conservative? Government economic proactivity is liberal, but it helps the rich and not the poor, which is "conservative"."

Ilion (from a long post, broken into three of four parts): "... In a republic, it’s impossible to have "government money and involvement used to help people who lack it". For one thing, in a republic, there is no such thing as "government money" - everything "the government" controls must first be taken from "the people". ..."

B.Prokop (the particular hard-core leftist at question): Leave it to "Ilion" to misunderstand (or else just deliberately misrepresent) the most basic things. ...

What this fool (*), this liar and worse than a liar, is trying to dispute is the plain fact that there is no such thing as "government money" for "the government" to pass out to its favoréd clients; that when "the government" passes out favors to some, it does so only afer first forcibly co-opting the resources of others, of those less favored by the ruling elites.

Secondarily, he's trying to dispute the truth that the American Republic is not intended to be, nor can it work as nor survive as, a polity in which there are favored and dis-favored classes. He's trying to stand on its head the foundational truth that we are all equal before the law, by having it that some (i.e. the leftists, such as himself, who know how to run everyone else's lives) are more equal, while some (i.e. "the rich" ... and "the poor" who, like me, despise leftism and all its lying promises) are less equal.

Then, the fool (*) goes on to assert that I am "constantly bleating about how ignorant [I] find[] everybody else ..." Surely Gentle Reader can see the risible nature of the accusation. I mean, even aside from the fact that I don't bleat, I have never once said anything about how ignorant I find everyone else, or even anyone else, to be. What I *am* always on about is the common refusal to think clearly and logically.

(*) As I keep pointing out, that is a moral evaluation: it's about the lack of intellectual integrity; it's says nothing about intelligence.


But, perhaps I have been mistaken; perhaps little Bobbie really does (foolishly) believe that there is such a thing as "government money", which doesn't have to be first forcibly taken from one set of subjects before it can be given to another, more favoréd set.

Maybe, it's like this -- after little Bobbie learned that Parson Weems' tale about the Father of Our Country chopping down his father's money tree and manfully owning to it when Washington père asked was just a pedagogical myth, after he came to understand that young George never did chop down his father's money tree, he reasoned (ahem!) that the money tree must still be there; and that after the Father of Our Country died without issue, his Uncle Sam inherited the tree, and has been carefully tending it and harvesting the money ever since.

So, what do you think, boys and girls? Is little Bobbie a boobie, or is he simply a liar?

Or, have I, perhaps, posed a false dichotomy? Might it be that he is both an idiot and a fool?

For, Gentle Reader, get this ... the fool, or idiot, or both simultaneously, continues digging the hole he willfully jumped into, by letting slip what he really thinks about your and my freedom --

But be that as it may, what he fails utterly to comprehend is that in the United States (by theory, at least) the government and the people are the same thing. There is no meaningful distinction between government money and citizens' money. There are simply wise and prudent determinations that we the people make as to who decides to spend what and where.

We do not, Thank God (and I mean that literally), live in an Ayn Randian dystopia, but in a nation of, by, and for the people.

(Which is what makes the intrusion of anonymous big donor and corporate influence into the process so destructive - thank you, "Citizens United".)

This fool is explicitly claiming that something called "we the people" owns you and me. Now, I've often said that that is his strange belief ... and he has often accused me of misrepresenting, which is to say, lying, about his views and mindset.

But, there it is, direct from the ass himself.

===========
MEANWHILE, Victor Reppert, who is ashamed to be metaphysically associated with the likes of the late Jerry Falwell, whom the leftists hated and still hate because he (generally) did not shy away from clearly stating unpopular and anti-leftist truths about Christ and Christianity, is proud to call that fool, that utterly wicked man, who desires above all things to use governmental force and compulsion to enslave you and me, and all our children unto the nth generation, and to call that slavery Christianity, a friend.

DNC Scientists Disprove Existence of Roberts' Taxon

Iowahawk: DNC Scientists Disprove Existence of Roberts' Taxon

Buddha's Problem

Gentle Reader may recall that it is my position that there are two general forms of philosophical atheism (*) -- materialistic atheism, which we might call "Western" atheism; and anti-materialistic atheism, which we might call "Eastern" atheism, with Buddhism being its exemplar.

Gentle Reader may further recall that it is my position that one may -- and ought to -- reject Buddhism as irrational and absurd, right off the bat, without further consideration or argument against it, as soon as one understands that the core commitment of Buddhism is that "I do not exist" (**). This is not to say that one may not marshal arguments against it, but that one has no moral or rational obligation to do so.

William Vallicella is one example of those who go above and beyond in this regard; this is partly because he likes to play with ideas, but also, in my opinion, because he declines to understand that that the Anatta Doctrine -- the claim-and-axiom that "There are no selves", which is to say, "I do not exist" -- is itself the problem with, and self-refutation of, that form of God-denial. To put that last another way, and as I have said before, I don't believe Vallicella really wants answers so much as he wants to play at asking questions.

But, the foregoing is a tanget to the point of this post, which is an insight into where Buddha went wrong --

William Vallicella: The 'Control Argument' for the Anatta Doctrine

...
Buddha then goes on to argue similarly with respect to the rest of the five aggregates or categories of personality-constituents (khandhas, Sanskrit: skandhas), namely, feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), consciousness (vinnana), and mental formations (sankharas). All are claimed to be not-self. Thus we are told that feeling afflicts us and is not amenable to our control, whence it is inferred that feeling is not one's self, not one's own inner substance. The tacit premise of this enthymematic argument is that one's self would have to be something over which one would have complete control. The tacit premise is that the self is something wholly active and spontaneous and self-regulating. And it is clear that something wholly active will not suffer: to suffer is precisely to be afflicted by something external over which one has no control. To suffer is to be passive. An agent in excelsis is an impassible agent. (In the West, impassibility became one of the divine attributes.) ...

Buddha's mistake is two-fold:
1) As Aristotle did (i.e. "An agent in excelsis is an impassible agent. (In the West, impassibility became one of the divine attributes.)"), Buddha incorrectly reasoned that God -- to be God -- *must be* impassive in all regards. However, such a proposition is not actually a deliverance of reason (***), but is, rather, the expression of an unrecognized cultural assumption: that to love another is to be vulnerabe in the sense of being weak-and-incomplete (****).
2) He did the materialistic-atheists one better: whereas the materialistic-atheist begins with the hidden-proposition that "If I cannot be God, if I cannot be the Self-Existent, then there is no God", Buddha began with the hidden-proposition that "If I cannot be God, if I cannot be the Self-Existent, then *I* do not exist.

God-denial is *always* built upon the desire to be God. And, one way or another, God-denial always involves the denial that one's own self exists: with Buddhism, the denial of one's own existence is up-front; with materialist-atheism, the denial of one's own existence is a logical consequence (and one that most self-proclaimed atheists take great pains to avoid understanding as such).

And, sure enough, Vallicella gets to the same observation about Buddha and Buddism:

...
The gist of the control argument is this. There is no evidence of a self since nothing with which we are acquainted is immutable, and nothing with which we are acquainted is something over which we have complete control.

But this raises an obvious question: Isn't the standard for selfhood being set unattainably high? The argument is tantamount to saying that if I am not God or a god, then I am not a self. Arguably[Ilíon: sure, arguably; but the argument is incorrect], God to be God must be impassible; but must a self to be a self be impassible?

==========
(*) I wrote "philosophical atheism" because it is my further contention that there are passing few self-proclaimed atheists who *really* believe the atheism they espouse, for they are, to a man, wholly uninterested in knowing/understanding the logical implications of the proposition that "God is NOT" ... while, at the same time, vast multitudes of those who do "believe in God", as they like to say, and who despise the self-proclaimed atheists, are functional atheists, for they likewise are uninterested in the logical implications of the proposition that "God IS"; that is to say, most self-proclaimed non-atheists are not only uninterested in knowing God, but also in knowing about God.

(**) One way or another, *all* atheisms will either begin with, or end with, the assertion that "I do not exist"; that is, *all* atheisms are irrational and absurd, and are to be rejected on that ground.

(***) That is, such a proposition is not actually a truth about God that we may learn via "natural theology", irrespective of, or independently of, God's self-revelation to us in history (i.e. the Bible) and in the person of the Christ.

(****) "Natural theology" -- reason -- teaches us that God, being "the ground of all being", is not and cannot be incomplete. Combining this truth with the incorrect (cultural) belief that to be 'vulnerable' is ipso facto to be weak-and-incomplete leads logically to the false belief that God is and must be impassive. To put it another way, the "God of the philosophers" is but an expression of the machismo fear of being seen by other men as being 'weak'.

But, Of Course

Study links parasite in cats to suicide risk in humans